Shaq Trade

With Phoenix looking bad in game 2 and 3 and on the brink of being out in the first round, everyone is criticizing the Shaq trade.

Such a tough call...if Phoenix wins game 1, the entire series and conversation is different. But there is certainly something different with this Phoenix team than the Phoenix team of the past couple years. They aren't quite as fun to watch and lost some of their team character where they'd punish other teams via fast offense. They would outrun ANY team in the league and they developed a discipline about overpowering teams with offense that seemed to subvert their obvious defensive liabilities.

With respect to Shaq, they got a huge presence in the middle, but a guy who can't play the old Phoenix style. So they have a down low, half court weapon, and an intimidating guy in the paint on defense.

The argument, of course, is they weren't winning the championship the old way, so they needed to try something different. The counter-argument is that they were a bad call away from winning the way they were and they panicked.

Who knows? They made the NBA more interesting and maybe themselves less so. In any case, the jury is still out, we'll see how they play tonight.